U.S. Pat. No. 9,519,284 to Wurman et al. discloses “goods to man” approach. It takes an entire rack, with tens of inventories, to pickers or a picking location. This approach carries empties spaces in the rack and only uses a fraction of the inventories spaces in the rack. On the contrary, the present disclosure only takes inventory from racks as needed. The present disclosure is more efficient.
The present disclosure supports batch processing to create an entirely related buffer for needed items to dramatically improve picking and sorting efficiency. The present disclosure enables mechanisms for using “vision, magnets, or lasers for navigation” including applying optical sensors, sensing QR codes, applying magnets from wires and applying laser from laser bouncing.
The present disclosure facilitates three-dimensional navigation to locate addresses of bins or pallets on racks, on lockers or designated spaces on a floor. Bins and pallets may have bottom portions in letter M shapes or in character π shapes.